


The Magician and the Fairytale

by Cobbledstories



Category: Fate/Zero
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:41:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29466669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cobbledstories/pseuds/Cobbledstories
Summary: The Fourth Holy Grail War is over, but Saber remains in Fuyuki City to help pick up the pieces, wondering what to make of Kiritsugu's relationship with his newly adopted son.A what-if scenario in which Saber survived the events of Fate/Zero.
Relationships: Emiya Kiritsugu & Arturia Pendragon | Saber
Comments: 5
Kudos: 35





	The Magician and the Fairytale

She found him, at last, standing on the top of a smoldering hill of wreckage. His back was to her, but she knew his silhouette, which loomed like a ship's figurehead over the sea of fire that had once been Fuyuki.

"Emiya Kiritsugu!" Saber screamed, staggering up the hill towards him. Her eyes and throat stung from smoke. Her fury at the loss of the Grail was perhaps the only force keeping her standing. Shaking, she pointed her sword at him. "How dare you-- face me, you bastard--" 

Kiritsugu turned to face her.

Saber's rage died in her mouth.

His face was wet with tears, and in his arms he carried a boy with flame-colored hair.

\--

The boy watched them vacantly from a little ways away as they combed through the rubble as best they could. Aside from the crackle of fires, the distant wail of sirens, and the shifting of debris, the night was deathly silent.

Saber wiped sweat off her brow and went to the boy, bending down to his eye-level. "You're sure your family was here?"

He nodded. Kiritsugu's coat was wrapped around him.

"Where did you last see them?"

He pointed vaguely.

Saber looked back towards the wreckage. She had already looked in that area. It had been awash with flame. When she had blasted the fire away with Invisible Air, she had seen nothing but broken walls and charred bodies.

"I don't think you'll find them," said the boy.

\--

They visited the boy in the hospital as soon as they could. He had come through the disaster miraculously unscathed, but there was still an empty look in his eyes that unnerved Saber. He stared at them both from the hospital bed, unsurprised and unphased by their reappearance.

"I'll get straight to the point,” said Kiritsugu. “You can come live with a man you've never met, or go to an orphanage. Which would you prefer?"

His tone was light, and Saber was suddenly reminded of the time she had stood at the window of the Einzbern castle and watched Kiritsugu play with his daughter in the snow. It seemed years ago in her memory.

The boy scrunched up his face in thought, then pointed to Kiritsugu.

“Good,” said Kiritsugu, with a smile. “I was hoping you might. But there’s something else you should know about me. You see, I’m a magician.”

The boy looked back at him, his eyes wide with innocent trust. 

"Her too?" he asked, pointing at Saber.

She felt Kiritsugu hesitate. Out of bitter curiosity, she kept her mouth shut and waited to hear how he was going to dodge a direct reference to her.

"No," Kiritsugu said. "She's just a fairytale."

\--

They took Shirou home, fixed up the house with some neighbors, and slowly helped Fuyuki piece itself back together. 

Shirou healed too, his eyes having regained a happy glitter, and he stubbornly helped with the building despite only being able to carry the toolbox and hammer in a few bent nails. Kiritsugu taught him how to handle a drill with exceptional patience. 

Saber did the best she could to assist in repairs, but although the Throne of Heroes had given her basic knowledge of modern tools, her fingers itched to be wrapped around the handle of Excalibur rather than a wrench. Plus, there were distractions.

"Fight me!" cried a boisterous voice in clumsy accented English, and a kendo stick was thrust into her face. "I challenge you to a duel of swords! Prepare yourself, villain!"

Saber set down her tools with a rueful smile and got to her feet. The kendo stick offered to her was obligingly taken, and she squared off against the energetic teenage girl who addressed her.

Taiga Fujimura, one of the neighbors who was helping them with the house, had started showing up quite regularly, especially around mealtimes. Saber was unsure if Kiritsugu had invited her or if Taiga had simply invited herself, but either way she was grateful for the extra company. The girl provided much needed energy in the house and split up the tense atmosphere between Kiritsugu and Saber.

"Ha!" crowed Taiga, lunging forward. 

Saber countered her strike easily and set up an easily blockable attack of her own, careful not to take advantage of the openings in Taiga's form. They parried back and forth for a bit, but when Taiga made a particularly foolhardy thrust, all it took was a flick of the wrist for Saber to knock the kendo stick right out of the girl’s hand.

"Ahh, defeated again!" Taiga cried, switching back to Japanese, her ponytail bouncing as she jumped up and down in distress. “Saber-san, please, please, teach me how to be as good as you!”

"I’ll do my best, but I can't teach you kendo techniques," said Saber apologetically. "My training is with the longsword."

"Wah! How exotic!” gasped Taiga, eyes sparkling. “So cool! And you’re so good! The training schools in Britain must be insane!"

"Oh yes. My brother and I used to practice eight hours a day."

Taiga's eyes bugged out. "No way! No wonder you wanted a vacation!"

Kiritsugu had been no help at providing a cover story-- simply answering "She is visiting from overseas" whenever he was asked about her-- so Saber had been filling in the details herself. Kiritsugu was a friend of her family; she was taking time off from school in Britain to study abroad; she knew Japanese so well from Kiritsugu's flawless instruction.

That last lie was told partly to get Taiga to stop hounding her for English lessons-- having absorbed Japanese entirely from the Grail, she had no real idea how it was different from English or how to go about teaching her own native tongue. Her reluctant praise of Kiritsugu's teaching abilities seemed to do the trick: Taiga, who seemed already captivated by his worldly knowledge, wrangled him into tutoring her. He did so without complaint, even taught her with a smile and a laugh, and Saber found herself spending many dinners pleasantly conversing with Taiga in English.

But there was a trade-off. Whenever Saber spoke with Taiga, Kiritsugu sat in silence at the end of the table. Whenever Kiritsugu spoke with Taiga, Saber found herself interrupted, ignored, or otherwise blocked from entering the conversation, despite Taiga’s best and awkward efforts to include her. Thus the dinner table felt like a battlezone over Taiga’s attention, which to the girl’s credit she split very graciously.

He still never spoke to her, beyond small phrases like "Pass the salt" or "Shirou needs to be picked up from school at 4." These statements were never uttered directly to her, but to some invisible point in the air a couple meters to her left. She had given up on asking him questions. She grew accustomed to asking Taiga what Kiritsugu was intending to do every day, as she would never find out otherwise.

This was all tolerable, if not ideal. This was no longer what drove her to fury.

No, what drove her absolutely insane, beyond anything else, was how utterly unrecognizable he was when he spoke to his son.

Laughing, smiling, always gently listening to Shirou's prattling. Always gazing attentively at the boy with love in his eyes.

It twisted her stomach up in knots.

\--

“Tell me a story,” said Shirou one night.

Kiritsugu was away, as he often was for weeks at a time. He did not tell Saber where he went, and Saber did not care. His absence was a relief to her. But Shirou grew strangely silent during these times, in a way that reminded Saber, unsettlingly, of the way he had been just after the fire.

In an effort to cheer him up, she taught him how to swordfight-- which, miraculously, did seem to restore the sparkle in his eyes. During the day, she and Taiga and Shirou romped about the house and the yard outside, dueling across the tatami mats, turning the house into a fortress to rival Camelot. The battles lasted hours, sometimes, with ground being lost and won as the tides of war turned (the kitchen was a particular desired stronghold, and there the fights raged fiercest). When night fell, Taiga went running home with her spoils (a bento box of leftovers), and Saber, as she did now, tucked an exhausted but exhilarated Shirou into bed.

“What kind of story would you like to hear?” asked Saber.

Shirou paused to think. His eyes shone as he contemplated the question. “A fairytale.”

“A fairytale,” repeated Saber. “Alright. I know one.”

“Once, there was a boy who lived in a small town with his father and brother. Every morning he would go out and fetch hay for the horses and firewood for his family, and every day he would help his older brother train to become a knight.

One day, the boy got lost in the woods, and there he met a strange old man. The old man was a magician, and greeted the boy as if he had been waiting for him for a long time.

‘Hail, my king!’

‘You must be mistaken,’ said the boy. ‘I am no king.’

‘Ah, my mistake,’ said the magician, with a twinkle in his eye. ‘I am mistaking that which is for that which will be.’

From that point on, the boy learned many things from the magician. They went on wondrous adventures, to see faerie queens, and dragons, and all sorts of other people and creatures. 

Sometimes he turned the boy into a fish, or a bird, or another animal. 

Sometimes the magician turned the boy into a girl, and clothed her in beautiful dresses and white lilies. 

And all this time the boy learned about life, and death, and war, and power, and all the rights and wrongs of the world.

Then, one day, news reached the boy’s small town of a strange sword which had been discovered. The sword was buried to the hilt in a great stone, and upon it read an inscription: “Whosoever pulls this sword from the stone shall become the rightful king.’

Of course, many people travelled to see this sword and try their luck, including the boy’s father, and his brother too, but none could budge the sword. 

The boy stood from a distance and watched them. He waited for the crowds to disperse, murmuring their disappointment, and then, finally, he approached the sword alone.

And yet the boy was not alone, for as soon as he stepped up to the sword, his friend the magician appeared.

‘Consider carefully before you do this,’ said the magician. ‘Once you draw this sword, there is only a cruel fate ahead.’

‘Will I not become king, for which you have been preparing me all these years?’

‘Indeed you are meant to be King,’ said the magician, ‘as you are royal by blood, and your father, too, was a king. But at your birth I stole you away, and placed you among good, ordinary folk, who raised you and protected you as if you were their own, giving you a chance to live a happy, ordinary life. For if you become king, you shall become something inhuman, too, and in the end you will know only tragedy.’

‘Even so,’ said the boy, ‘if I wield this sword for the sake of my ideals, then surely I cannot regret this decision.’

‘If you are sure,’ said the magician, ‘then draw the sword from the stone.’

The boy put his hand on the sword’s hilt.”

Saber paused.

“And then?” asked Shirou, with excitement. “Did he pull the sword out?”

“No,” said Saber. “The boy went home and never touched any sword ever again. Someone else became king. A better and wiser king, who was able to do what the boy could not. Peace and goodness prospered, and everyone was happy, and the boy was happy, too.”

She folded her hands on her lap, the story over.

“Oh,” said Shirou.

“You seem disappointed.”

“No,” protested Shirou weakly. “I’m glad it had a happy ending.”

“Yes,” said Saber, standing up to turn off the light. “But it’s just a fairytale.”

\--

Construction on the new city center was finally complete, and at its opening Fuyuki held a memorial service for the victims of the fire. What seemed like the population of the entire city gathered there to pay their respects. The destroyed buildings and paving stones had been rebuilt, modern and new and better than before, but the names etched in the stone markers about the center square served as a somber reminder of what had been lost.

Kiritsugu held Shirou’s hand the whole time. When they stood in front of the marker that bore the names of his parents, Shirou slipped his hand free, ran his fingers along the engravings of his parents’ names, and then, like a bird returning safely to a birdhouse, his hand flit back into the safety of Kiritsugu’s grasp. He still had not spoken one word about his parents since the night of the fire.

Saber stood on Shirou’s other side, looking out over the crowded city square. Irisviel’s name would not be found on any marker here, nor had her name been uttered once in remembrance since her death. While all the other victims of the fire would be remembered for decades to come, Irisviel von Einzbern would go unknown and unmourned by the people of Fuyuki, unmentioned by Emiya Kiritsugu.

It was as if she had never existed.

\--

"I want to help," she said to Kiritsugu one afternoon, when Shirou was at archery practice. "I want to be more involved in Shirou’s upbringing. I'm good with him. He likes me. There is much I can contribute-- much I can teach him."

Taiga blanched at the suddenly confrontational atmosphere and began shoveling food into her mouth. Saber silently apologized to her. She had long since figured out that the only way to have a conversation with Kiritsugu was to have a middle-man present, and Taiga was almost always the unfortunate victim.

Kiritsugu slowly put down his chopsticks.

"It amazes me, Taiga, that so many irresponsible people exist who believe themselves fit to raise a child."

"Oh?" squeaked Taiga, a bit too loudly.

"Take, for example, a king with an illegitimate son: a child who grew up far from the king's custody, grew to lead a rebellion against him, and was subsequently disowned and dispatched by his own father-- but not before the king was fatally wounded in return, and his kingdom utterly destroyed." He took a sip of tea. "I would have to be mad to take parenting advice from a person like that."

He might as well have hit her in the face.

It was the lowest possible blow he could have given, and she could give absolutely no defense to it, especially not with Taiga present. Saber grit her teeth in miserable fury, staring down at her plate in silence and blinking back the hot angry tears brimming at her eyes. 

How dare you use Mordred against me like that.

How dare you speak to me of Mordred at all!

"A surprising attitude," she heard herself say in English, her voice thick with derision, "considering the man who holds it has abandoned his own daughter entirely."

She did not wait to see what Kiritsugu's reaction would be. Instead, she left, and shut the sliding door to the dining room behind her.

\--

She stood in the washroom in front of the mirror. A young girl's face looked back at her. The same face she had worn even before she had ever been King.

The same face that had looked back at her, bloody and anguished, and had called her Father as Rhongomyniad pierced their body.

Neither of them were the age that such a face suggested. Mordred, as a homunculus produced by Morgan's wretched witchcraft, couldn't have actually been any older than Shirou was now-- and Saber herself had stopped physically aging the moment she had pulled Caliburn from the stone. Father and son-- their appearances were both roughly a decade off, in different directions. 

Lord. She had killed a child Shirou's age.

Was Kiritsugu right? Was she unfit to be around this boy? Was she a detriment to his childhood?

She turned away from the mirror, sick of her own reflection.

\--

It was hours later, long past midnight, by the time Saber finally emerged from her room, driven by restlessness and self-resentment. She left the house as quietly as she could, went to the old storage shed out back, and threw open its doors, letting the moonlight pool in. In a corner of the dusty floor, the outline of a magic circle was just barely illuminated.

She went and sat on its edge. If she concentrated hard enough, she could see Irisviel, weak and unable to move, lying serenely in the circle, just as she had looked the last time Saber had ever seen her. 

A shadow fell across her. She looked up. Kiritsugu was standing in the doorway of the shed.

“Ah,” said Saber. “You’re here. Well? Will you speak to me? Or will your cowardice continue to keep you silent?”

He did not look at her, but down at the magic circle. Glittering specks of dust drifted aimlessly between them in the moonlight.

“Very well,” said Saber, setting her jaw and lowering her eyes. “I won’t waste my time any longer.”

“You come here often,” said Kiritsugu. “Once a week, at the least. Often twice. You stay here for hours, sometimes even until the sun comes up.”

Blood rushed to her face, partly from the shock of being directly addressed, and partly from embarrassment. She had not known he had known.

“It is peaceful here,” said Saber. “I like to come here to clear my head.”

“Well then, do it more often,” said Kiritsugu. “Your head needs clearing. It’s full of misconceptions and foolish ideas.”

She scrambled to her feet, rage coursing through her veins. “I will not have you speak to me like this--”

“Forgive me. You wished me to speak. If you don’t wish to hear it, then I have nothing else to say to you.” He bent his knees and sat upon the floor, gazing upon the magic circle, as Saber had just been doing. 

This infuriated her even more. “And Irisviel? Do you have nothing to say about her? It seems you would prefer to let her memory rot.”

“I have not forgotten her,” said Kiritsugu, an edge to his voice.

“Irisviel died for you, and you betrayed her, and now you’re raising a child that isn’t yours in place of her daughter.”

“I have no obligation to justify myself to a dead king.”

“No, nor honour, apparently,” said Saber, voice trembling. "How can you call yourself a husband? I loved her more than you did. I at least wouldn't have let her death be for nothing!"

Kiritsugu laughed. "You should have saved your love for your own wife, King Arthur. Perhaps Camelot would not have fallen, if you had."

She slammed her fist into the wall of the shed, her heart pounding in her ears. "I DID LOVE MY WIFE!! How dare you-- how dare you sit there and make assumptions about my life and my feelings!"

“Why shouldn’t I, when you judge me with equal carelessness?” said Kiritsugu, his own voice rising. “You think I have abandoned Illya. Where do you think I go when I leave? Do you know anything of the Einzberns? Do you have any idea how hard I have been trying to reach her? Not even to get her back-- just to see her, once.” His voice broke, and to Saber’s horror, he buried his face in his hands. “They won’t even let me onto the grounds.”

This was unexpected. Saber drew back, unsure how to react. Quietly, she uncurled her fists.

“They’ve cut her off from you?”

“Of course they have,” he said into his hands. “Illyasviel is their next Grail. After I betrayed them, they aren’t taking any chances.”

“I--” she swallowed, steeling herself. “Well, they’re right. You destroyed the Holy Grail. Iri’s sacrifice--”

“I destroyed it because it would have destroyed the world.”

“What?”

“It showed me,” Kiritsugu said, wearily. “It showed me the destruction it would bring with my wish. An object like that can’t be holy, or good. After all the killing I did to reach this point-- to reach a point where I thought no one else would have to die-- the only option that was offered to me was more death.”

She stood there, stunned. Camlann seemed to bleed in at the edge of her vision, and for a terrible moment she was there again, on that hill of corpses, breathing in the blood and ash in the air. 

Then she was back in the kitchen with Kiritsugu. She slammed her hands onto the table, gasping for breath.

“Why did you not tell me this?” said Saber, bitterness creeping into her voice once more.

“Does it matter?” said Kiritsugu flatly. 

“It matters to me! Now that I know--”

“Your knowing changes nothing. Iri is dead. Illya is just as far from me as before. And due to my contact with the Grail’s curse, I have fewer than five years left to live.”

Silence.

“Then my days are also numbered,” said Saber.

“Yes,” said Kiritsugu. “At my death, you will disappear from this time without ever having achieved your goals.”

Her fingers clenched into a fist.

“I have enough mana,” said Saber, “for one more use of Excalibur. The Einzberns may be powerful, but they are still mages of the modern age. My blade was forged by ancient magic users far beyond their skill.”

Slowly, Kiritsugu raised his head, as the implied offer behind this statement seemed to sink in. Something stirred in those dark eyes.

“Expending that much mana now would destroy your spiritual core,” he said. “Even with our contract, I wouldn’t be able to keep you manifested in this time.”

“That is correct,” said Saber.

“I can’t ask that of you,” said Kiritsugu. “You could spend these remaining years living as a human being. The carefree life a child like you should’ve had to begin with, before ever laying hands on a weapon.”

His voice was still filled with disgust, but this time Saber thought perhaps it was not entirely directed at her.

“I am not a child,” said Saber firmly. “I will rescue the daughter of the woman I swore to protect. And she will have five years to spend with her father.”

Kiritsugu let out another weary laugh. “So, the King of Knights wishes to die a hero, even for a Master she hates.”

“Not for you,” said Saber. “For Irisviel.”

\--

“Do you really have to go back to England?” said Taiga.

Saber smiled serenely, folding the lid of her suitcase shut. “I do.”

Taiga sighed heavily, sitting with a thump on top of the suitcase. “I wish you were staying for longer. You’re the best opponent I’ve ever had. I’ll never find anyone better.”

“I’ll spar with you, Taiga,” said Shirou. “I won’t let Saber’s lessons go to waste.” He was looking very intently at the floor.

Taiga whapped him lightly over the head with her kendo sword. “Better get your reflexes up to speed, then, shrimp! I said I want a sparring partner, not a squire!”

Rubbing his head, Shirou handed Saber a small bundle covered in cloth. He seemed determined to avoid her eyes. “For the trip,” he said. “I made you rice cakes. I’m sorry-- some of them are a little bit burnt.”

“Thank you, Shirou.” She accepted the bundle graciously. “I accept these tokens of your hard work, and I am sure they will sustain me admirably.”

Taiga laughed. “What a weirdo thing to say. It’s been fun having a girl like you around, Saber-san. We’re basically the same age, but y’know, sometimes the way you act, you seem...” She trailed off, then brightened up suddenly, her thought left unfinished. “Hey! Now that Saber-san’s leaving, I’m officially the best teen swordswoman in the Miyami district bracket!!! I’m Number One!!”

She jumped up, laughing raucously, and ran off. Saber could hear her hollering, “Number one!!” in English all the way down the hall.

“Your brother in England probably misses you, huh,” said Shirou, shuffling his feet. “I bet he’s really happy you’re coming back.”

“Yes,” said Saber, wondering. Had Kay survived the Battle of Camlann, as the stories said? Would she ever get the chance to see him again? He was not her brother by blood, but he was family in every way that had mattered, far more than the blood sister who had orchestrated the end that lay in wait for her.

“I’ll miss you too, though,” said Shirou, with the voice of someone trying not to cry.

Saber looked at him. Sure enough, his eyes were swimming in tears. Quickly, she knelt down and put her hands on his shoulders.

“We’ll meet again,” she said, and although it was a promise she could hardly keep, she felt somehow that it was true. “One day, I will return. I promise.” She smoothed back his fiery hair. “But in the meantime, when Kiritsugu comes back with your new sister, look after her, okay? She’s never left her home before. This will all be strange. So be her knight, and treat her like a princess.”

Shirou nodded slowly, and his eyes glittered. “I will. I promise.”

\--

They flew to Germany on a commercial plane this time, not on a private jet. Kiritsugu produced Saber’s old passport from God knows where. The plane ride was spent in silence. That much had not changed.

It was only after days of travel, when they finally stood at the edge of the snow-covered forest, that Kiritsugu outlined the plan.

“We only have to get within Excalibur’s range of the castle,” he said, lighting a cigarette and cupping his hand to shield it from the wind. “That means we won’t have to deal with the worst of their security, but there are still some defenses in place all the way out here. Follow me closely and don’t trust in your sense of direction.”

The path he trod through the snow seemed winding and nonsensical. Several times Saber was sure that they were travelling in circles, or heading back out of the forest. She fought through the dizzying feeling of losing her way and kept her eyes fixed on the tails of Kiritsugu’s black longcoat, whipping in the icy wind.

A single howl echoed in the silence. Kiritsugu halted. Saber tensed up and scanned the landscape, but if there was movement, it was obscured by the first flurries of an oncoming snow.

Another howl, and then a chorus of howls, closer this time. The wind picked up, adding another sort of eerie howling to the chorus. A discordant harmony.

With a sweep of her arm, Saber was clad in her battle armour, Excalibur tight in her grip. It all weighed strangely to her. It had been a year since she’d worn this dress and held this sword. A year since she’d fought any foe who wasn’t a child with a kendo stick. 

Streaks of gray came pouring forth from between the trees ahead, and Saber tensed her muscles, preparing to go meet them halfway, but Kiritsugu put out a hand to stop her. She grit her teeth, already taking offense, then remembered his warning. If they separated, there was no guarantee she’d be able to find her way back to him.

She waited, instead, as Kiritsugu drew an assault rifle out from under his coat, aimed it at the oncoming wolves, and began to fire. 

The pack thinned, bodies falling limp in its wake. By the time Kiritsugu had to pause to reload, the pack was down to about half of its original size. Those who were not hit did not falter, only weaved over the bodies of their bullet-riddled kin and, if anything, seemed to pick up more speed in their mad dash towards their prey. 

“The rest are mine,” said Saber. 

Kiritsugu said nothing, only reloaded and cocked his gun.

The wolves leapt, snarling, the whites of their eyes visible, and now Saber sprung into action, faster than the eye could follow. Excalibur slashed through the beasts like a knife through butter. Blood splattered outward in wide arcs as she moved amongst the pack, a lion ripping lesser predators to shreds. Snarls turned to strangled death cries, turned to whimpers, turned to silence.

She had taught Taiga and Shirou the art of swordplay, but the art of battle was messy, and brutal, and merciless. It was nothing like a sunny day in the Emiya house fighting over okonomiyaki.

The wolves were all dead before Kiritsugu could fire another bullet. He slowly lowered his gun and took a long drag from his cigarette. 

“Look at that,” said Kiritsugu, and his voice was strangely light. “Walnuts.”

Confused, Saber followed his gaze. He was staring not at the corpses scattered around them, but up at the tops of the trees. On the tips of those leafless branches, which stood out like dark cracks in the sky’s foundation, hung little round ornaments nestled in small clusters of white blossoms.

Saber looked back down. The falling snow was already covering up the evidence of the massacre. The dead wolves lay shrouded in a thin sheet of white, as if someone had rolled them in sugar.

“We’re not far off,” said Kiritsugu. “Let’s keep moving.”

They trudged on, with renewed urgency. The snowstorm grew thicker and more aggressive with every step they took. Snowflakes whirled in a frenzy about them, sharp little crystals which tore at their faces. The icy winds attacked them, howling and unnatural and unyielding, but Saber levied Excalibur and blasted back with Invisible Air, carving out a tunnel for them to pass through. 

At last, the blizzard fell away, all at once. Kiritsugu stopped moving again, and this time, it was immediately evident what he was looking at-- the castle of the Einzberns was visible above the trees.

“This is as close as we’ll be able to get,” said Kiritsugu.

“Well then,” said Saber, “now is the time.”

She paused only a moment. Then, taking a deep breath, she walked past him, slowly, as a king walks into his final battle. 

The castle was indeed a great fortress. But Saber knew without a doubt that it had never been built to withstand Excalibur. The light of her holy sword would carve into its walls, cracking it open as if it were merely a hollow shell, ending the Einzbern’s long siege so that Kiritsugu could rescue the daughter of Irisviel. Illya would be taken back to Fuyuki, safe and sound, back to that house where Shirou and Taiga were waiting, miles and miles away, and she would never become the Grail.

Planting her feet in the snow, she unsheathed Excalibur from its veil of Invisible Air. The blue and gold metalwork shone as brightly as it had on the day she had received it from the Lady of the Lake.

"Saber."

She instinctively stiffened as if bracing herself for a command seal. But those days were over. She turned to her Master expectantly.

Kiritsugu was looking directly at her. "I... have something of yours." 

Saber studied him. He seemed neither antagonistic nor apologetic. "Well, what is it?"

"Avalon."

Her mouth opened.

"It was the catalyst used to summon you. Iri kept it to maintain her functionality. We never told you."

Saber sighed. She looked up at the castle. "Where is it now?"

"With Shirou. Ever since that night."

"Ah, so that's how he survived." She smiled, glancing back at her old Master. "Keep it, Emiya Kiritsugu. You may need it still. Perhaps I may be summoned again one day."

"Even if you are, you know I won't be your Master."

"I know, and I'm not sorry for it."

She turned back to the castle, raised her sword over her head with both hands, and concentrated on channeling all her mana into Excalibur. The blade began to shine. Motes of gold floated up and gathered in a vortex of blazing light above her, until even the hilt of the sword burned with warmth in her hands. 

"Goodbye, Once and Future King," said the voice of her old Master behind her. It was a testament to the strangeness of their relationship that Saber still could not tell if he meant it sincerely or ironically.

"Goodbye, Emiya Kiritsugu," she replied, and brought down the Sword of Promised Victory.


End file.
